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That won’t really be a problem for the cloud providers. That simply charge more because the customers will use more compute.

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But it will cost them on I/O which they can not be passed to consumers as the price is contractual. Either the cloud providers on the hook or have to pass it somehow to Intel.

Which in some cases might make it cheaper for customers to use their own hardware, resulting in cloud providers losing business.

Maybe. But their own hardware will also be slower, no?

Maybe. When it is your own hardware you can do a different risk analysis. If you control all the code that runs on the system you don't need any mitigation. Most servers don't run arbitrary code form the internet - at least not intentionally. (a security hole that allows remote code execution is a real issue, but that risk can be managed)

My company doesn't need to mitigate the risk of me using these tricks. I'm not going to, but even if I was I have many other ways to get at sensitive data if I tried. If I get caught I'm fired and put in prison which is enough mitigation.

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